Diana Canals never liked public speaking. “I panic, I get really stressed out, and I can’t sleep for days leading up to it.” As the runner-up prize winner of the UBC Three Minute Thesis (3MT) final competition held on March 10, the young researcher has certainly changed for the better.

Dr. Leonard Foster, Director of the Centre for High-Throughput Biology, and an Investigator with the Centre for Blood Research, has been awarded a highly prestigious UBC Killam Research Prize, recognizing his outstanding research and scholarly contributions.

Diana Canals from the CBR was victorious over other excellent contestants from many UBC Departments and won the second place at the UBC 3MT Finals! This is the first year that the CBR hosted a 3MT Heat.

Ed Conway, the Director of the UBC Centre for Blood Research (CBR), will co-lead the translational/basic science platform of a new national research network focused on venous thromboembolism (VTE) — the first such network in the world.

There were also talks on the development of protease inhibitors (small molecules, peptides and monoclonal antibodies) and how to apply this knowledge in translational research. The topics ranged from bench side to bed side and how these proteases modulate all aspects of biology and human diseases by precisely cutting specific portions of proteins to either activate or inactive them.